Alan Dugan's book Poems (1961) won the Yale Younger Poets Prize. This book was also awarded the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1962. In the same year Alan Dugan also won the Prix de Rome from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and spent 1962-63 in Rome as a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.

Alan Dugan has received Guggenheim and Rockelleler Foundation awards, and has travelled and taught widely. In 1982 Alan Dugan received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poe..